Hike #1420; Andover to Blairstown

Hike #1420: 6/5/21 Andover to Blairstown with Serious Sean Dougherty, Kirk Rohn, Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Weider, Jennifer Tull, Elizabeth Manner, Robin Deitz, Dr. Mike Krejsa, Professor John DiFiore, Kenny Zaruni, Jim "Uncle Soup" Campbell, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Cory Salveson, Linda Salveson, and Luke Freselone

This would be yet another really crazy night hike, and one of the craziest of the entire Summer.

I had done a lot of this stuff in the past as well, but not all of it, and I had never done them in this order, in this way. This was going to be a pretty fun and interesting route.

We met in Blairstown where we parked cars on street in town. We then shuttled in as few as possible to the start point, on the Sussex Branch Trail, formerly the Sussex Branch of the Lackawanna Railroad, at the former site of the Andover station.
The hike would start off normally; we followed the old Sussex Branch through Andover to the south, crossed the streets through town, and passed very close to people's back yards on the trail.

We then made our way to the underpass beneath the Lackawanna Cutoff, completed in 1911. The Sussex Railroad started out as a mining railroad very early on and graduated from a mule drawn venture to locomotive line. The Cutoff was a completely different generation and grandeur.
On the south side of the culvert, there is a path that leads up to that rail bed. We took that and continued on the cutoff to the west.
We started following the old Cutoff west, which always blows my mind.
I had first hiked the line in the 1980s. The tracks were only removed on this in 1982, so it was always kind of boring compared to other lines, because it wasn't really in woods.

Even when I started doing group hikes on it, it was still pretty wide open, and now it had grown in to the point that we were in the shade most of the time, and it felt more like a sort of wilderness experience.
We crossed over Rt 517, Airport Road, Pequest Road, and the Pequest River.
The entire section was up on a high fill, though we wouldn't really have known it.
This section, known as the Pequest Fill, is the largest railroad fill in the world.
We passed through a deep cut before reaching Greendel, and the ATV path that followed the line started to meander a bit more with lots of mud puddles.

We stopped for a break when we got to the Greendel Tower, which used to sort of be out in the open, but now was back in a very weedy area. Invasive Autumn Olives are taking over badly.

I hadn't been back to the tower in quite a long time, so it was cool to see it again.

There are no stairs inside it any more, but it is possible to get up inside the top of it by pulling up onto the I-beams and climbing up from that level.
I didn't bother trying to get up this time. I've been feeling way too broken and didn't want to risk any further injuries from what I'd already done lately.
I don't know what will become of the tower when (and if) the Cutoff does become reactivated as they are talking about on a near daily basis, but I'm afraid it might get demolished. The area around it will require a lot of work.
Greendell has changed a lot, as there used to be a bridge that carried Wolfs Corner Road over the railroad. In more recent years, that was demolished in favor of what will now be a grade crossing.
Similar was done with another road out by Stanhope, and it will probably cause some issues.
We headed out of the tower and started following the right of way a bit more, but the ATV path had to leave it. There were paths going both to the left and the right, and it was totally unlike it had ever been when I was there before. I chose the ATV path to the right, which went up a bit of a slope and then came out to Wolfs Corner Road.

William Nelson photo, 1980s

To the left from here, the old station stood looking rather good. The graffiti was all cleaned off, and the windows were boarded. Around the outside was all manicured, mowed grass.

The last time I had been in that thing, it was full of all sorts of crazy graffiti, slapping together basically every curse word and disgusting act imaginable, and regurgitating those few things as word salad all over the place.
The tower used to be full of it also, but it looked like some of it had been painted over. There was still a generous amount left.
Whoever that "artist" was, had also hit all of the buildings in the Rutherford Stuyvesant Estate in Allamuchy Mountain State Park. It was really nuts. Basically every inch of every wall was completely covered in these words.
I got some then and now compilation photos of both the tower and the station, and we moved on across Wolfs Corner Road.

It wasn't very long after that we passed beneath the concrete bridge that carries Henry Road over the right of way.
There were all sorts of drinks going around by this time. I had had Victory Golden Monkey to start out, then a crazy thing called Sororicide. This was a 15.5% ABV imperial stout made with roasted peanuts, peanut butter, Ecuadorian cacao, and Indian vanilla. 

We continued to the west, and there was an old building to the left near the Henry Road underpass. The walk was pleasant, but I had to let everyone know not to go too far ahead.

1912 Watson Bunnell photo; Steamtown NHS archives

The really diverse part of this hike was coming up pretty soon, and we couldn't miss the turn. I watched my phone GPS, and unfortunately no one was listening when I called for them to slow or stop.

When I finally got them to wait up, I had already followed them too far, and we didn't want to backtrack to get to where I was planning to go.

 I figured we would make my planned turn at a different place and just hope for the best.

Like I did back in 2011, I wanted to cut through the woods from the Cutoff into the Dark Moon Preserve.
There wasn't really a good way to go from where we ended up, so I bushwhacked into the woods to the right, and found a sort of cleft in the rocks to climb up. Taking this way took me to a semi clear woods road. This would be good enough. We waited for everyone to get up the slope to here and regroup. Serious Sean had brought some Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA, which is great, so we had some of that.

Richard Polk photo, 1973

We followed the woods road to the east again, on top of the rock outcroppings. It turned slightly to the north, and I seem to recall we had to turn away from it in order to get to Dark Moon Preserve.

There are very nice natural ridges through this area and the woods road remained on top of one of them. This was actually the near southern end of the Ridge and Valley geological district.

We headed off trail just a bit, and I used my phone GPS to get us out into the north end of the fields of the Dark Moon Preserve.

The Dark Moon Preserve was created in 2003 because it was in danger of development, it contains head waters of the Bear Brook, but also because it was the site of a native American settlement some 600 years ago.

We headed through some of the high grasses and such, directly to the north, and soon came to the nicely mowed trail that goes all the way around the property. We turned left from here.
We skirted an island of trees out in the fields, and then turned to the right to cross over a tributary of the Bear Brook on a farm bridge. We then continued to the north to come out of the preserve at Dark Moon Road.
From the parking area for the preserve, we went right on Dark Moon Road, then turned left on Wintermute Road to head to the north for a bit.

We followed this to a left turn on Yellow Frame Road. We went up hill just a bit, and then turned left into a field, skirting a fence, into the Johnsonburg Swamp Preserve.

I had done this previously on another hike when I lived at White Lake, but that time, we went through a different section of the preserve that butted up to Rt 94. Now, there is an access on the west side, and my plan was go go all the way through, which I had never done before.
We skirted the left side of fields through some high grass, but on a good path, and then entered the woods on what was once an old roadway.
We headed west for just a bit, and the side trail broke off to the left to the overlook over Mud Pond. There is another trail that goes to an old lime kiln, but there was no time to be doing anything other than direct and what I had planned. The overlook was definitely part of the plan, and we made it there with just enough light.

We had a nice break at the cliffs and watched it as the sun was going down. My plan from here was to follow the edge of the Mud Pond to the west, and then exit the preserve.

Sean had still had fireworks from some other recent thing we were doing, and so he set off some of them from right there, which kind of took me by surprise.

We continued to the west and it got much darker. 
I didn't even notice a woods road that went up to the right, where we left the preserve last time I did a trip through it. This time, we just continued on nd the path was good and clear all the way to a parking area on a driveway off of Old Stage Road, which is basically a driveway.
We reached the parking area, and then quietly made our way out the driveway and past the couple of houses before reaching Ramsey Road.

We turned right on the road, and then made our way to the left to head into some fields. It wasn't hunting season, and we'd never be those to damage any crops, so we made our way along a lane and then uphill through a cut in trees to a field.
We skirted the first field, cut through a line of trees, then through a second and third field that reached a farm lane. This became a driveway that took us out to Rt 94.
My original plan was to follow through Frelinghuysen Forest Preserve, but that would be way out of the way at this point. Instead, I decided that the smartest thing would be to walk the bit of Rt 94 to the west, and then head down to the Paulinskill Valley Trail in Marksboro.

We did just that, walked along the road for a bit, and then headed downhill on Spring Valley Road to cross the Pualins Kill, then reached the former site of the Marksboro Station. I think this is where Luke met up with us but I can't quite remember. I was insanely exhausted as well as having had some drinks.
We continued along the trail to the west, which is super easy and along the river the entire time at this point. I had a million things going through my head and fell back behind the group at this point, who were all having a great time ahead.

They all moved so much faster than me to the west, out across the crossing at the Paulina Dam, and I just wandered by myself through the dark alone enjoying that last stretch along the Paulins Kill.
They all made it out to Blairstown way before, me, and Jenny came back to pick me up at the Paulina dam to end my hike, just about a mile short of the end point, but I still got the distance I had wanted.
Jenny had almost had me back to my car in Andover when we got an emergency phone call.
Serious Sean had flipped his car on Rt 94 in Marksboro. I was asleep in the car at that moment, but I switched into rescue mode and remembered from past experiences that it only takes three people to flip a car over like that again. I knew that we could do it. We started heading back to help Sean.

We didn't know what to think really getting out there, but by that time the police had already shown up and he had taken and passed a field sobriety test. He got away pretty lucky, barely banged up, and even said "It was actually kinda cool... kinda like an amusement park ride!"

He got in the car with Jenny and I, and the officer came over and asked a few more questions. Fortunately everyone was fine by this point in time, and Sean was all good to go with no problems.
His trunk had popped open and stuff went everywhere in the road, and was apparently strewn back in the direction he'd been coming from when he flipped, and John happened to have been going that direction, and picked up Sean's guitar and a whole lot of other stuff he was able to get, right out of the middle of the road.
We didn't have to flip a car back over, and they had towed it away so there was no responsibility on our parts when it came to that, and in the end everything was fortunately okay.
And so ended yet another very crazy night, but for the most part a great time.